Candy cane play dough

Each year we make a small Christmas gift for Maia and Carter’s friends and cousins. I like this to be a creative activity and something that they can help make themselves. This year we decided to make candy cane play dough, an idea which I spotted at the Artful Parent. What a great resource this is, its fast becoming one of my favourite places on the internet!

We made two big batches of play dough, one red and one green. Maia helped with the weighing/measuring, some mixing and then the all essential kneading at the end. We added some glitter for a bit of Christmas sparkle and a few drops of peppermint oil to give the play dough an authentic candy cane smell… Yum!

When we were ready to put the gifts together Maia weighed and divided each batch into 10 lots (weighing each individual piece to get them all about the same size), which was a really good activity for her – she picked it up very quickly.

Together we rolled each piece into a long snake, then twirled them together popped them in a jar with a piece of festive fabric over the lid and some ribbon to make the gifts look nice. All in all a great, easy little gift which hopefully will encourage lots of fun creative play when opened!